Re: Stable list vs versioning

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On 10/07/2016 07:18 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 06:47:47AM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>> On 10/07/2016 05:48 AM, Greg KH wrote:
>>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:51:08PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>>>> On 10/06/2016 09:22 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 09:19:50PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>>>>>> Hi!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 10/06/2016 08:52 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thu, Oct 06, 2016 at 06:54:43PM -0700, Thomas Hellstrom wrote:
>>>>>>>> Hi, Stable!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> As you might be aware of, some companies that maintain linux kernel
>>>>>>>> drivers have the habit of assigning each driver change a new version
>>>>>>>> number.
>>>>>>> And, as you have found out, that's a horrible thing to do for Linux and
>>>>>>> doesn't work at all :)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Just because it works for other slower-moving operating systems, I
>>>>>>> wouldn't recommend doing it for Linux.
>>>>>> Yes, I'm fully aware of the difficulties, though I was hoping that I,
>>>>>> with the help some bright ideas from the list could come up with a
>>>>>> clever way to make everybody happy.
>>>>> But who has the problem here really?  Not the kernel community or
>>>>> developers, but rather an odd set of unskilled QA people (your word, not
>>>>> mine.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Why can't they get more "skill"?  :)
>>>>>
>>>>> thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> greg k-h
>>>> Well, I would in no way call our QA people unskilled just because they
>>>> in general don't have the skill to know how to locate a particular,
>>>> sometimes well-hidden git repo and find out if a certain bug is fixed or
>>>> not. Not even Einstein knew how to do that ;)
>>> Huh?  All of the kernel trees we "release" are in one single repo, and
>>> it is very well known (linked to off of the kernel.org site front page):
>>> 	https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__git.kernel.org_cgit_linux_kernel_git_stable_linux-2Dstable.git&d=CwIBAg&c=Sqcl0Ez6M0X8aeM67LKIiDJAXVeAw-YihVMNtXt-uEs&r=vpukPkBtpoNQp2IUKuFviOmPNYWVKmen3Jeeu55zmEA&m=2nFSKLtpsbVgl3FEz2G3Io4y14rAxcjmJACORglPiwI&s=E02w2V0waHQkqaQ4KAcPYM3o2nWfYavhd12uJDJ24dI&e= 
>>>
>>> How is that difficult to find?
>> The "vanilla" stable ones are easy. The distro ones may not be, save
>> Ubuntu that sometimes "take over" a stable tree. Typically the kernels
>> we test are a distro-modified version of a stable tree.
> Then go complain to the distros!  And even then, all of them keep their
> kernels in pretty well-known, and documented, locations.  If not, go bug
> them, there is nothing we can do about it.
>
> Also, shouldn't your QA scripts just suck in the correct distro
> kernel/tree automatically?  No QA person should have to ever hunt for a
> kernel tree, that means you have not automated it, which seems very
> wrong to me.
>
>>>> But I won't try to argue here. I do think, though, that as long as
>>>> people believe the easier solution is to version each change they will
>>>> keep on doing that and unfortunately as a result important patches won't
>>>> get CC'd stable because that would mess up the versioning.
>>>>
>>>> From your answer I take it there is no interest from the stable
>>>> maintainers in helping solving this using some kind of mainline hash
>>>> registering tool. I guess perhaps another option is to locally automate
>>>> stable / distro git tree scanning.
>>> Maybe I really don't understand the "issue" you are trying to address
>>> here, can you try to rephrase it by showing a real example of what you
>>> are trying to solve?
>>>
>>> But again, there's nothing we can do about out-of-tree code, remember,
>>> they know where we are (and I'll take anything!), but we don't know
>>> where they are...
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> greg k-h
>> Yes. The problem would be
>>
>> Given a *binary* version of distro kernel X, based on stable kernel Y.
>> What _upstreamed_ bugfix patches has touched our module since the stable
>> branch was created? Let's assume the distro git tree is hard to find.
>>
>> a) Now if stable maintainers and distro kernel maintainers could use a
>> flag "record commit id" to the git am command, the mainline commit id
>> would be added to a binary visible table in the module, problem solved.
> But the stable mantainers DO all do that already today!  That info is
> all there, and has been there, for over a decade!  Just look at every
> commit in the stable kernel branches, it has that information for you,
> in a semi-easy format to parse.

Indeed they do, but the idea here was to have that information
extractable from a binary, but that would have required cooperation both
from the stable maintainers and the distro maintainers (who typically
are on this list). That's why I posted.

>
> If you have distro issues, go complain to them, nothing this list can do
> about that, sorry.
>
>> And if nobody else is interested, we'd probably be better off with b)
>> provided we can gain access to the git trees of the important distro
>> kernels.
> I find it hard to believe you don't have access to them already.  But
> again, if not, there's nothing we can do here, right?

Yes, that's right. Item b) would be a local thing.

>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h

Thanks for your input Greg!

Thomas


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